The colleges that offer donors the most bang for the buck when it comes to helping students are ones you’ve probably never heard of.

The State University of New York’s Broome Community College and Iowa-based Kirkwood Community College spend a large share of the donations they receive — roughly 86% and 80%, respectively, in fiscal year 2016 — on financial aid for students, according to data released Tuesday by the Council for Aid to Education, an organization that tracks college giving. On average, about 16% of donations to colleges were earmarked for financial aid during the same period, a share that’s remained roughly unchanged for 10 years, the data show.

Table: The colleges devoting the highest share of their dollars to financial aid, according to the Council for Aid to Education

College

State

% of donations spent on financial aid

Total money raised

Broome Community College

NY

86.1

$2,616,916

Kirkwood Community College

IA

79.7

$1,666,750

Frostburg State University

MD

77.6

$3,768,545

University of Pittsburgh-Bradford

PA

77.2

$1,594,685

Texas A&M-Commerce

TX

75.8

$2,834,546

Gordon State College

GA

75.2

$282,173

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

MA

74.6

$51,811,099

West Kentucky Community and Technical College

KY

74.5

$1,348,614

University of Maine System Central Office

ME

73.6

$33,113

Millersville University Pennsylvania

PA

71.8

$9,080,038

The research highlights the diverging fortunes and perhaps priorities of the haves and have-nots of higher education. The types of colleges putting the bulk of their tuition dollars toward financial aid and educating a large share of the nation’s low-income students aren’t the ones typically attracting the headline-grabbing supersize checks.

On the other hand, a handful of elite institutions educating a small share of the country’s students bring in an outsize share of donation dollars. Less than 1% of the nation’s colleges, or 20 institutions, took in $11.12 billion, or about 27% of all of the money donated to colleges in 2016, the Council found.

Though none of the schools that took in the most money last year are among the top 20 colleges when it comes to percentage of donations spent on financial aid, it’s possible that’s because they didn’t participate in that portion of the survey, said Ann Kaplan the director of the Voluntary Support of Education survey, which is the source of the Council’s data. Only about half of the colleges that responded to the survey reported on all of the factors needed to determine the share of their donations going to student financial aid, she said.

Many of institutions that bring in the most money do commit to meeting the full financial need of their low, and even middle-income students, but they educate a small share of them nationwide. As a result, they’re often under pressure from lawmakers and others to justify large donations for buildings or specialized programs and put more of their money toward educating low-income students.

Of course it isn’t necessarily surprising that community colleges or regional public universities would focus a larger share of their donation dollars on financial aid than other types of institutions. Larger operations have more moving parts to fund — research, buildings etc. — and so will necessarily devote a smaller share of their dollars to supporting students.

“They’re not raising money for anything else,” Kaplan said of the community colleges that put a big share of their donations toward financial aid.

Indeed, the Kirkwood Foundation, which supports Kirkwood Community College, is largely focused on scholarships, said Kathy Hall, the foundation’s executive director. “That is not unusual among community college foundations,” Hall said. “Community colleges traditionally are open-door institutions and have that mission of being accessible. Going right along with that is providing scholarship support.”

The school raises about $3 million a year to hand out roughly 1,500 scholarships worth an average of $2,000 each. And from the college’s perspective that money is doing its job. Kirkwood’s internal metrics show that students who receive scholarships are two and a half times more likely to graduate and two times more likely to transfer to a four-year school as students who don’t, Hall said.

Those kinds of results are part of what draws donors to earmark their gifts to community colleges for financial aid, said Catherine Williams, the executive director of the Broome Community College Foundation. “For very little money people can make a significant impact,” she said.

At Broome, most of the donations worth at least five figures go toward endowing scholarships, Williams said. Those can range from a dental society creating a fund for aspiring hygienists to alumni and retired faculty donating to a general scholarship fund.

Historically, the school’s fundraising efforts have focused on student needs, Williams said. When community members first founded the precursor to the foundation in 1953, it was called the Student Aid Society. That mission hasn’t really changed, particularly given that about 85% of their students need some sort of financial help.

“The easiest investment for people to make and one that they feel most gratified with is the ability to provide support to students who otherwise might not be able to get an education,” she said.

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